Who are the Rulers, Authorities & Powers?

What Paul's letter to the Ephesians may be telling us about our world today.

With Syria apparently now being led by the rebel leader Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, I wonder what will become of that ancient country that features so prominently in the Bible.

I’m fairly confident in stating that the baleful U.S. government—which has been meddling in the affairs of Syria for decades—has no idea how things will now turn out. The U.S. State Department listed al-Sharaa as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" in May 2013. However, after a brief chat with with an American delegation led by Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara A. Leaf, the State Department rescinded this designation. Like Paul on the Road to Damascus, it seems that al-Sharaa has undergone some sort of miraculous conversion—in his case, from a top international terrorist to a palatable replacement of the fallen dictator Bashar al-Assad.

I have long found it puzzling that the West was unable to come to terms with Assad, given how difficult it must be to govern that tribal, sectarian, and unruly country. In his upbringing and education, Assad was in many respects a western, secular leader. After studying medicine in Syria and serving as an army doctor, he moved to London for post-graduate training in ophthalmology at the Western Eye Hospital. While in London he married an Englishwoman of Syrian extraction named Asma Fawaz, who graduated from King's College London in 1996 with a bachelor's degree in computer science and French literature.

Asma worked in investment banking and was about to begin an MBA at Harvard University when she married Bashar al-Assad in 2000. She then quit investment banking and remained in Syria, where their three children were born. As First Lady, she supported government organizations involved with social and economic development as part of a reform initiative halted by the outbreak of the Syrian civil war.

Now it seems that our State Department and the CIA—which never liked Assad—believe that al-Sharaa will be a better man in Damascus. I suppose we shall see.

Contemplating this confusing state of affairs in Damascus—one that is likely to result in horrible things happening—I was reminded of Paul the Apostle and his famous Letter to the Ephesians, which he apparently wrote in the year 62 while imprisoned in Rome.

A remarkable verse that Biblical scholars have pondered for centuries is 6:12. The following is an English translation, along with key nouns from the original Koine Greek (in transliteration), which I have highlighted in bold.

For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers (archas), against the authorities (exousias), against the cosmic powers (kosmokratoras) of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil (pneumatika tes ponerias) in the heavenly places.

Who and what exactly are these rulers, authorities, cosmic powers, and spiritual forces of evil to which Paul refers?

It seems that Paul was not referring specifically to the Roman Emperor Nero in Rome and nor to the High Priest and elders of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem. I wonder if he was referring to some mysterious power that no one in history has ever seen or entirely understood—that is, the power that seems to propagate erroneous and destructive beliefs, or what modern people might call toxic ideologies.

We in the medical freedom movement have identified certain individuals such as Bill Gates, George Soros, and Klaus Schwab who have expressed their desire to change or “reset” the world. While these guys are indeed influential and capable of purchasing legions of compliant servants, a far more powerful force is the way in which erroneous and destructive ideas may seize the minds of millions.

Thinking about this makes me wonder if Dietrich Bonhoeffer was mistaken when he made a strong distinction between evil and stupidity in his famous essay “On Stupidity.”

Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than wickedness. Evil can be protested against, exposed, and, if necessary, it can be prevented by force. Evil always harbors the germ of self-destruction by inducing at least some uneasiness in people. We are defenseless against stupidity. Nothing can be done to oppose it, neither with protests nor with violence. Reasons cannot prevail. Facts that contradict one's prejudice simply don't need to be believed, and when they are inescapable, they can simply be brushed aside as meaningless, isolated cases.

Observing contemporary culture and politics, it occurs to me that stupidity is, in fact, the primary means through which evil acts in the world. Could it be that evil works by seducing the minds of ignorant people who are not in the habit of thinking seriously about anything?